With no other reported source of income, Rep. Terri Lois Gregory found a way to supplement her legislative salary recently: campaign funds.

Gregory wrote herself a $4,600 check a week after losing her primary in August. According to muddled campaign finance filings, her campaign still owes her more than $13,000, largely for a burgeoning total of self-reported mileage that strains the imagination of one long-time legislator.

The Republican’s 10th District stretches from Lawrence in the north to Ottawa in the south. It is a distance of about 30 miles at its longest point. In 2011, Gregory reported enough mileage to trek the length of the district some 549 times.

Gregory claimed 16,474 miles of business travel throughout her two-county House district at 51 cents per mile, creating an $8,401.74 bill for her campaign.

“I think it’s virtually impossible she could travel that number of miles given the fact that her district is relatively compact compared to, say, Ralph Ostmeyer's” said Sen. Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka.

Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell, represents a district that stretches over 18 counties in sparsely populated northwest Kansas. Ostmeyer reported 9,807 miles last year. Even in his heaviest travel year, 2008, his 14,251 miles fall short of Gregory's total in her first year.

Gregory continued to report extensive travels this year. She wrote herself a $2,797.20 mileage check out of campaign funds on June 30 on top of $883.20 in transportation money she received from the state for the legislative session. She has since reported another $2,296.25 that the campaign owes her.

Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said her organization requires candidates to keep mileage logs outlining the business behind each trip.

“When we do audits — and we do do audits — we require them to provide us with their log or journal they keep to make sure it adds up,” Williams said.

Gregory's last finance report says her campaign owes her $13,511.92 for mileage and other expenses. She reports $5,469.20 in campaign cash remaining, but is allowed to keep raising funds to make up the difference even though her re-election bid failed.

Williams said her office will review all legislators' campaign finances in January, when all 2012 transactions are reported.

"Whenever there appears to be a questionable expenditure or an expenditure that needs more documentation, the commission, through its errors and omissions process, requires candidates to provide explanation for those expenditures and back-up documentation," Williams said.

Williams office has just two auditors, though, and proposed axing one of them when asked for a budget that assumes 10 percent cuts next session.

Lynn Hellebust, who served as executive director of the governmental ethics commission when it was formed in the 1970s, said there is a conflict of interest in legislators holding the purse strings and setting the legal parameters of the commission tasked with regulating them.

“It’s like trying to hold a tiger by the tail," Hellebust said. "It's inherently a problem."

Hellebust said during his tenure the commission tried to get access to lawmakers' tax returns, but was rebuffed by the Kansas Department of Revenue. He couldn't recall whether the commission asked legislators to pass a bill granting access, but was confident in what the response would have been.

“They would have laughed at us,” Hellebust said.

Gregory has ended up before the ethics commission in the past. She was fined $150 in 2011 after using her state email account to send a newsletter soliciting campaign contributions.

Gregory told the ethics commission she sent the solicitation from the wrong email account by mistake.

She believes her mileage totals are accurate, though. Gregory told The Topeka Capital-Journal in September the numbers don’t strike her as strange and she couldn't say why other legislators don't approach her documented travels.

Gregory produced a mileage log for 2012 that showed almost daily meetings with lobbyists and constituent groups.

“It was unusual for me not to have multiple meetings a day,” Gregory said. “I just felt like it was my job to attend meetings I was invited to. I drove where I needed to.”

High mileage isn't the only unusual item in Gregory's campaign finance reports, though.

Her most recent report includes 16 entries dated Oct. 26, although the reporting period only goes through Oct. 25. She appeared to take the $13,596.27 that she reported her campaign owing her at the end of July and subtracting the $4,600.27 she paid herself, while carrying over the remaining $8,996.00 as a "balance" owed her. She then added about another $4,000 in expenses, most of which correlate with "in-kind" contributions of goods and services that aren’t reimbursable.

“She clearly is not reporting correctly," said Democratic Party chairwoman Joan Wagnon, a former secretary of the Kansas Department of Revenue. "I have no idea if she’s misusing her funds because it’s so garbled you can’t tell.”

Reached by phone Friday, Gregory said she was sick and declined to talk about her most recent filing. She didn’t respond to a subsequent email.

Her campaign also wrote an $8,057.11 check on Aug. 2 for "printing" paid to "Campaign Services" at an unspecified P.O. box with the same ZIP code as Gregory's Ottawa address.

A search of the Kansas secretary of state's database turned up no businesses in Kansas named "Campaign Services."

“She either doesn’t know what she’s doing or she’s making some money on this deal," Wagnon said. "And I can’t tell which.”

Legislators must file with the secretary of state’s office an annual “Statement of Substantial Interests” that lists investments, employment and other major sources of income.

Gregory’s 2012 statement shows a retirement plan through Wells Fargo. Her only listed employment is as a legislator for the state of Kansas, which pays about $26,000 in salary and daily expenses.

Hellebust said he had “mixed feelings” about Gregory’s big mileage reimbursement.

On the one hand, while he stressed he doesn’t know if Gregory is “padding” or not, her mileage totals deserve a thorough examination.

On the other hand, he said mileage reimbursements put candidates on more even footing with “independently wealthy” opponents and Gregory's campaign account is small potatoes compared to some of the treasure chests compiled for this year's heated elections.

But he and Wagnon both said her filing illustrates the importance of a well-appointed ethics commission.

"In the last few years the changes that have occurred in campaign finance have created a situation where money is simply overwhelming the whole process," Hellebust said. "Pulling money out to cover travel expenses is a very small element in the whole picture.”

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Money from mineral royalties is specifically exempt . The Ethics Commission is a joke and TerriLois is an especially bad joke . Just be thankful Goldilocks is gone .
A major constitutional question who besides the legislature is empowered to raise and spend money (appropriations) besides the legislature ? Come on Lynn you are smarter than that .

But the legislature makes sure it does not have funds so it can do its job. It is no big secret, the legislature starves it to death as they have done to other organizations. Then they say it has no value. Speaking of having No Value; look at our Kansas Legislature.

It's possible to make a mistake in expenses, but this is outright fraud. How can any rational person expect someone to believe this type of egregious accounting? And the right wing talks about welfare recipients. But look at her record on the issues-total hypocrite.

She's the one who went into the office of a fellow Republican who is moderate, for the purpose of surreptitiously taping her in a conversation - hoping to get something bad on her to make her lose this last election.

Anybody who can't see Brownback, the Koch Boys, and Mike O'Neal's hand in that is deluded beyond belief.

There, at least, was one blessing to come our way in that election. Anybody who donated to her deserves to have their donations misused.

Koch Industries owns the GOP there, but a few of the legislators have had the temerity to try to actually work for their constituents instead of for the Kochs. So the Koch Brothers and one of their subsidiaries, the Chamber of Commerce, are trying to oust these Republicans from the legislature and replace them with ********** and outright fascists who understand how to take orders from up top.

This week the spat took a real turn for the bizarre as an especially vapid and deranged **********, state Rep. TerriLois Gregory, was caught secretly recording state Sen. Vicki Schmidt, a mainstream conservative.

A House Republican attempted to covertly record a private conversation in a Capitol office with a Topeka senator while discussing controversial health reforms sought by Gov. Sam Brownback.

Rep. TerriLois Gregory, of Baldwin City, asked to sit down with Republican Sen. Vicki Schmidt to talk about Medicaid services for people with disabilities. During the meeting this past Wednesday, Schmidt noticed a small flashing light in Gregory's satchel. It wasn’t a telephone.

Ethics Commission imposes fines on citizens who exercise their First Amendment right to free speech . Allows politicians who are caught red handed using campaign funds for purely personal expenditures to file amended reports and no penalties imposed just repay the committee .
Legislators have a state paid expense account and Ethics Commission allows them to supplement this with campaign funds . At what point do campaign contributions become bribes ?
Correspondence between Executive Director and powerful legislators on a first name bases and you consider that an objective agency ? I think it was rambling man who once called it the "Wink and Nod Committee". He was right . Now if we could only get legislators like Clyde Hill, Pete Loux , Pete McGill, Don Everet and John Carlin we might stand a chance .

Well enough to do their jobs. If only the wealthy can serve the public we get what we have now. The 1% giving themselves special treatment. Election costs and service should be paid by the people they serve.

and corrupt GOP lawmakers here in Kansas if we had some sort of investigative body willing to investigate and report GOP corruption, and investigative body that was not owned lock stock and barrel by the GOP.

You hit the nail on the head. The dirtiest little secret in state politics is that we have anything close to a representative democracy. Not everyone can run for state office because most people can't live on $13k a year or take 3 months off of their job. So you eliminate about 95% of the population that can even run. You are left with the nut jobs we have in the legislature now.

"A bipartisan contingent of legislators said Gregory violated an unwritten code of conduct among lawmakers that frowns on clandestine recording of colleagues in closed-door meetings." Are they afraid of what will come to the public! Not defending this lady, but makes you wonder about other "unwritten code of conduct."

I would encourage the press and this reporter to check the reports of LIBERAL HENSLEY and his SENATE PAC. Answers to the expenses charged to the accounts and the expenses of Hensley and his staff deserve to be published. Is HENSLEY calling the kettle black when he uses the similar tactics.

No, Hensley isn't calling the kettle black. All of his expenses are publicly available, you are allowed to see anything you want.

This isn't partisan, she is corrupt, it is an individual thing. She isn't corrupt because she is a Republican right winger, she is just a corrupt Republican right winger. There are plenty of noncorrupt Republican right wingers, she is not among them.